Not Applicable.
All of the material in this patent application is subject to copyright protection under the copyright laws of the United States and of other countries. As of the first effective filing date of the present application, this material is protected as unpublished material. However, permission to copy this material is hereby granted to the extent that the copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent documentation or patent disclosure, as it appears in the United States Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of scrollable graphical user interfaces and more particularly to two dimensional scroll controls used in graphical user interfaces for scrolling data sets.
2. Description of the Related Art
In many applications, data sets grow to be very large and difficult to access using standard techniques. Searching is only applicable when the user has some notion of what they are looking for. Techniques are needed to enable users easily browse large data sets. When interacting with large sets of data they often lose their context of the source of the information. They xe2x80x9cget lostxe2x80x9d in the data. Especially when the data is in a visual format, there is a desire by users to easily xe2x80x9cscrollxe2x80x9d through that data.
One solution to this problem is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,903,267 entitled xe2x80x9cDocument Interface Mechanism And Method For Navigating Through Large Documentsxe2x80x9d with inventor Mark E. Fisher, issued May 11, 1999 and commonly assigned herewith to International Business Machines. Disclosed is a method and apparatus for controlling the scroll rate of a scroll bar slider in a graphical user interface. The preferred embodiment uses a domain mechanism that divides large documents into multiple domains. The document is displayed in a viewing window with the slider moving the document from one of the current domain to the other end. Because the slider only moves within one domain, and not the whole document, the slider sensitivity is reduced such that it can be effectively used to scroll through documents. The document can be moved within the viewing window to other domains by activating one of a plurality of domain marks, where each domain mark represents a domain not currently scrollable with the slider. Thus, the entire document can be easily browsed while the scroll rate is maintained at an effective level. This provides a user with a high degree of control when viewing all sizes of documents. This patent discloses innovative techniques to browse a single document as opposed to browse a large set of documents is part of a data set or part of a database.
Another solution is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,623,588 entitled xe2x80x9cComputer User Interface With Non-salience Deemphasisxe2x80x9d with inventor Eric J. Gould, issued Apr. 22, 1997 and assigned to New York University. Disclosed is a relativity controller is a scroll bar/window combination that provides a way to see data in relation to both the context of its wholeness and the salience of its contents. To accomplish this, the linear density or other appearance of the scroll bar (acting as a ruler or scale) varies with the density of the document salience (as indicated by different kinds of annotations or marks). It also provides a way to zoom between perspectives. This is usable on many different data types: including sound, video, graphics, calendars and word processors. In this patent the density of the scroll bar depends on the salience of the area of the data being browsed and not linked to a location within a data set or within a database being browsed.
Still another solution is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,659,333 entitled xe2x80x9cSystem and Method for Scrolling Controlxe2x80x9d with inventor Haruhiro Okishima, issued Aug. 19, 1997, and assigned to Fujitsu Limited. Disclosed is a scrolling control is carried out in response to a press of a cursor key or a scroll key. While a scroll control is carried out, data displayed on a screen is reduced, to thereby increase an amount of the data displayed at the same time. This patent does not address the problems of scrolling through a set of data, such a database of image files.
Still another solution is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,825,349 entitled xe2x80x9cIntelligent Scrollingxe2x80x9d with inventors John R. Meier et al., issued on Oct. 20, 1998 and assigned to Apple Computer, Inc. Disclosed is a method and apparatus for intelligent scrolling. In a computer system that has a user interface which allows for the movement of items from a first open window to a second open window or to a second region, such as a desktop, the present invention allows a user to select one or more items in the first window, move the selected item(s) to within a predetermined distance from an edge of the first window for a predetermined period of time and cause the viewable portion of the data and/or document within the first window to scroll in a corresponding direction. This allows multiple window scrolling but does not address the problems of scrolling through a data set.
Accordingly, a need exists for a method and apparatus to permit users to scroll through large sets of data, such as a database of image files, while maintaining the positional context of xe2x80x9cwherexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cwhat positionxe2x80x9d in the data set is currently being viewed in relation to the overall data set.
Briefly, in accordance with the present invention, a method to scroll through a complete multimedia data set. The multimedia data set can include still images, video, audio, and text. The method provides positional context to a user of what position in the overall data set is currently being viewed. The method begins with the application receiving the size of a complete data set. A first scrollable region of indicators is displayed that represents the complete data set. The first scrollable region has a first marker to indicate a current selection from the complete data set. A second scrollable region of indicators is displayed that represents a subset of the complete data set in the first scrollable region, the second scrollable region containing a second marker indicating the current selection from the complete data set. A third region is displayed that has a current selection from the complete multimedia data set. User input is received to move the second marker between a first indicator and a second indication in the second scrollable region of indicators whereby the current selection in the third region is changed to correspond to a new selection from the complete multimedia data set corresponding to the second indicator.
In one embodiment, continuous scrolling through the complete data set is provided by displaying a second scrollable region. The second scrollable region is any geometric shape and in this embodiment a trapezoid is used. The top of the trapezoidal scroll area is oriented to be parallel to the first area and in close proximity thereto, and the base of the trapezoidal scroll area is positioned near the second third area. The trapezoidal area has a series of separators defining a plurality of continuous regions within the trapezoidal scroll area wherein the regions are formed closer together at the top of the trapezoidal scroll area and the regions far-out to be further apart at the bottom of the trapezoidal scroll area.
In another embodiment, discrete scrolling through the complete data set is provided by displaying a second scrollable region comprising one or more adjacent columns of indicators positioned parallel to the first scrollable region. The indicators positioned in the one or more adjacent columns [1, 2, . . . N] are presented in each of the columns starting from a column closest to the first scrollable area, column [1] contains indicators which are a subset of the indicators that represent the complete data set. Column [2] contains indicators that are a subset of the indicators in column [1] and column [N] contains indicators that are a subset of the indicators in column [Nxe2x88x921].